The Game of School essay is very very interesting to me mainly because of its visible relevance to nearly every school across the nation. However unfortunate it is, many students do not take pride in doing well in classes and teachers do not have the desire to teach uninterested students. The Game is simply just going though the motions, just focusing on graduation, and just doing the minimum. Not striving for the best or aiming higher than the bar has been set. In my own experiences, in my honors level courses, there was much more drive to be intellectual and you were rewarded socially among your peers for thinking outside the box or making deeper analysis. In this level you were not made fun of for succeeding, you were envied. However, in lower level or average classes such was not the case. The article suggests that teachers also get bored of striving for the best because of lack of time, how they are being managed, and the stress of the job. This is all understandable, but I do not believe that the teachers are as bored or unmotivated as the author gives them credit for. At times, of course they are exhausted but never defeated. She also criticizes the standard ways of conducting class, through quizzes, homework, classwork, and lecture on the chapter. This is the standard way of teaching and assessing and for plenty it is sufficient to learn and succeed with. They are not just mindless activities but they do have purpose. It is the students that interpret them as idiotic or do not complete them that are not benefitting from the work being given. Though I agree that at times education is taken passively, I believe it to be more in the hands of the students than the teachers. Yes the teachers can give more interesting assignments and try to motivate them, but if the students are closed to learning then it is not the teachers fault. In education reform, the standardized testing emphasis is not putting any more focus on creative learning. It is in fact doing the exact opposite, forcing the students to think in options of only A, B, C, or D. If the focus was more on rewarding students for creativity or desire to learn rather than having the students gauge their success in a number maybe the participants in this "Game of School" would decline.